Case: Copyrights/Sanctions (W.D. Wash.)

A federal district court in Washington issued Rule 11 sanctions against the defendant corporation’s attorneys for filing an excessively broad copyright infringement counterclaim. The court held that under the Copyright Act, parties may not pursue infringement claims before registering their works with the Copyright Office. After the court ordered the defendants to show cause as to why its 132 separate infringement counterclaims shouldn’t be dismissed for lack of registration, the defendants finally acknowledged that their works weren’t registered and narrowed its counterclaims to just a single act of infringement.